Used to be fun and a family, not the same anymore - Senior Software Engineer Blizzard Entertainment Employee Review

1.0
10 Feb 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There really aren't many pros anymore. Blizzard used to have a real family feel, people would hang out after work together, play boardgames, have a few drinks, work late nights and not even care. It felt like we all had each other's backs, and management was trusted. Now people come to work, do the required hours and leave. The passion has been fading slowly. Now it's just a job. Right now, the only pro is saying "I work at Blizzard." Or maybe, "we have statues in the office. " The pro is most definitely not the pay, because it's terrible compared to any comparable tech company. Basically, if you move to Amazon, Google, FB, Netflix etc, you have a good chance of more than doubling your money. You may get the chance (if you're on the right team) to work with good and passionate people. However, recently, the best people have been leaving engineering positions like rats leaving a sinking ship.

Cons

So many cons. There is a "good old boy" form of leadership who have risen up to senior levels across the company because they're friends with other old school Blizzard guys. These people think that because they were involved with WoW or Starcraft back in the day, it means they're geniuses and everything they say or do now must be the right thing. However, they don't realize that the games industry and tech in general has changed, and they have not adapted to the changing times. These guys might be good in individual contributor roles, but they are terrible at senior management. This is the "Peter Principle" in action as you watch in astonishment. Levels of incompetency that are so ridiculous it looks like something you might see in "Silicon Valley" or some other comedy show. These guys enjoy their senior positions while making terrible strategic decisions, not realizing that huge amounts of talent is leaving the company and huge amounts of money have been wasted due to poor decision making and investments. The pay is terrible. If you compare salaries for any form of enterprise engineering, whether it's for data engineering, backend, front-end, infrastructure, network, SRE, etc, you will earn 50% less or worse, when compared to other tech companies. There is poor transparency over salaries and salary bands. Any discussion of invididual salaries is deterred, probably because there are people earning 100k here who could be earning 200k+ at Google. The engineers earning 180k at Blizzard, could be earning 300-400k total comp in San Francisco. This isn't hyperbole. This is the "Blizzard tax." It used to be that people were willing to pay this Blizzard tax to work at a fun and family friendly company, the company of your dreams. Well, Blizzard isn't like that anymore, and so if you're no longer going to work at a place of your dreams, why keep earning significantly less? Depending on your team, you could work in a toxic environment. Some teams are better than others in this regard. Other teams have a terrible reputation across the company... *cough* Battle.net *cough cough*

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5.0
2 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Game industry with lots of cool events

Cons

Salary can be higher with expensive housing in CA

2.0
23 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Depending on the team, you get to work with some great people. - Company events are fun and make you temporarily forget that you're still in a corporate environment. - You're near the games being released.

Cons

On the surface, the company talks a big game about being structured and performance-driven. In reality, it feels pretty chaotic once you’re actually in it. Expectations aren’t clearly defined, and what “success” looks like seems to shift depending on the week or who you’re talking to. You end up spending more time managing optics and trying to stay aligned with moving targets than actually doing solid engineering work. What makes it worse is how management handles team dynamics. Toxic behavior doesn’t really get addressed — if anything, it sometimes feels like it’s enabled. Feedback can feel very one-sided, and when you raise concerns, they’re not always taken seriously or represented fairly. There are definitely moments where the narrative about your performance doesn’t match the reality of what you’re actually doing day to day, which slowly kills trust. At a minimum, leadership needs to get better at clear communication, setting stable and objective expectations, and actually supporting both engineers and managers. Without that, even strong teams start to feel dysfunctional. Compensation doesn’t make up for it either. It often feels like decisions are driven by cost-cutting rather than recognizing real impact, which makes the whole environment feel more transactional than motivating. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this place in its current state, especially if you’re an experienced professional looking for a stable, well-run role.

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